Skip to Content

Get the latest on Wrath of the Lich King on WoW Insider!
Holidash Blog
AOL Tech

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Security, Windows, Blogging, Web services, Commercial

FeedDemon developer wants to help other aggregator developers with security

FeedDemonNick Bradbury is a good guy. You can get an idea of this by searching on his name in Technorati, and seeing what other bloggers have to say about him. The reason I bring this up is that I was blown away by the way in which Nick tackled the recent revelation that there is a security vulnerability in almost all current RSS aggregators that could allow a nefarious publisher to get a script to run on the reader's computer. Nick is the developer behind the absolutely excellent FeedDemon feed reader, which NewsGator purchased about a year ago. In Nick's case, due to the manner in which he uses Internet Explorer's rendering engine in "Internet Zone" mode, the exploit doesn't work on FeedDemon. That fact notwithstanding, Nick dove into the problem and came up with a fix to eliminate the vulnerability altogether. The new version of FeedDemon, 2.0.0.25, is available as of today, and includes a substantial performance enhancement.

All that is well and good, and for those of us that own a copy of FeedDemon the new version is a very worthwhile upgrade. But that's not what this story is about.

After figuring out the problem and a solution for it, Nick decided to share his knowledge with the RSS community, and is offering to help any other feed aggregator developers (in other words, his competition) to ensure that their applications are not vulnerable either. That's pretty cool.

Relevant Posts

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
SXSWi 2008 Schwag Unboxing
SXSWi 2008 Day 1
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

BloggingStocks Tech Coverage

More Tech Coverage

Joystiq

TUAW

BloggingStocks

Autoblog

Xbox 360 Fanboy

Engadget

WOW Insider

Switched.com

FanHouse